{"id":243,"date":"2017-03-25T16:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-03-25T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/?p=243"},"modified":"2019-03-28T09:15:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T09:15:59","slug":"stats-in-the-news-1-science-technology-march-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marriott-stats.com\/nigels-blog\/stats-in-the-news-1-science-technology-march-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Stats in the News #1 – Science & Technology March 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to my first post where I put my Evidence Hierarchy or Circle\u00a0<\/a>into practice and show you what is behind the headline.\"\"<\/p>\n

Today I am concentrating on science and technology related articles from the BBC website since that is accessible to nearly everyone.\u00a0 As always, I am critiquing the article more than the research since I have not read the research papers that motivated the article.\u00a0 The 3 articles are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “Fruit shaped sensor can improve freshness<\/a>“.<\/li>\n
  2. “Robots to affect up to 30% of jobs<\/a>“<\/li>\n
  3. “Dinosaurs may have UK origin<\/a>“<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    “Fruit shaped sensor can improve freshness<\/a>“<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    This is a good Belief>Logic>Experiment<\/strong><\/em> example to start with.\u00a0 The article\u00a0describes the development of an artificial fruit with sensors that could be loaded alongside real fruit when they are being shipped around the world.\u00a0 The sensor would monitor temperatures as it is shipped and\u00a0the shippers would be able to take action\u00a0if temperatures were reaching levels that might spoil the fruit.\u00a0 The goal is to reduce spoilage of fruit in shipments.<\/p>\n

    If I apply the Evidence Circle to this article, this is what I see:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. No data is provided in the article\u00a0on how much fruit is spoiled today after shipment.\u00a0 Such a figure would give us an idea of the scale of the problem and the potential benefit of a solution to the problem.\u00a0 Without that information, we are left with a BELIEF that fruit spoilage is a problem that needs a solution.\u00a0 I am sure that it is a major problem and that data is available to measure the scale of the problem but the article does not give that information.\u00a0 We also told that spoilage is linked with temperature but again no information is given on how this relationship works i.e. what is a good range for fruit storage.<\/li>\n
    2. From this belief that fruit spoilage is a problem and that it is correlated with temperature, LOGIC has been used to determine that if we could measure the temperature within a shipment of fruit (rather than the air temperature surrounding the fruit at present), we would be able to control shipment temperatures a lot better and this would result in lower spoilage.\u00a0 The end result is the proposed sensor intended to mimic certain fruit items.<\/li>\n
    3. Currently a prototype is being built and the intention is to test it.\u00a0 This will require an EXPERIMENT to see if the sensor is capable of measuring the right temperature and transmitting that information to a shipper.\u00a0 The experiment should be designed so that it can measure the benefit of the sensor i.e. by how much could fruit spoilage be reduced.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Together I see within the article a chain from BELIEF to EXPERIMENT which is something that does occur in a lot of R&D departments i.e. identify a problem, figure out a possible solution and test that the solution works.\u00a0 Actually it is possible to anticipate that if the experiment is successful, the next stage will Observation and Anecdote as follows:<\/p>\n